Rafters: Part 3

Well, the stubborn ingenious man figured out how to raise the remaining rafters on his own.  I still don't know how he did it!  Leverage, strength, sweat and a few pulled muscles.  He humored me once by letting me hold the rope for him, but I don't think he really needed my help.  Because he was running out of horizontal room on top of the walls he raised the last several rafters and stacked them together in the center of the house.  Once all of them were vertical, he put a 2x12 through the peak of all of them and attached it to the far West rafter.  Then he slid each rafter along into its final placement from West to East fixing them in place as he went.   

Chris used rope to secure each rafter to its neighbour as he stacked them

Here you can see the rafters coming back to the centre of the house from the West side

Two more to go!

Done!

Feels like a real roof already!

22 roof rafters in all

Chris attaches the strapping that the metal roof will be fixed to

Site inspectors give us a pass

I guess its spring now

The site is pretty mucky

Chris built us our own temporary boardwalk to get us through the mud

Freezing rain

We had a pretty good storm through.  Lots of freezing rain!

See the tree that came down just to the right of the house?  It was already marked to be taken down in the spring.  Luckily it didn't fall info the house!

Pictures just can't seem to capture the brilliance of the sun shining on the ice

 

Winter arrives a little late

We've finally had a real winter storm! 

Molly loves it!

So do the kids!

They've built some snow forts and tunnels

Gramma and Grandad came over for a snowball fight!

Good thing it was Gramma who got Finnlee in the face and not one of her siblings! 
Gramma can get away with it!

If anyone else had thrown that snowball, Finnlee would be screaming!

Grandad got into it too!

Gramma threw them into the snowbank

It doesn't look like they were upset about it

All this snow is bringing the dear out of the woods to forage.  Can you see two of them?

Rafters: Part 2

Chris called some friends up to help raise some more rafters.  Eric, Louis, Laurie, and Steve came by to lend a hand.  But we discovered that you only really need 2-3 people to raise a rafter.  More than that and you have people standing around idol for too long while one rafter is being secured before raising the next.  So Chris has worked out a way of doing it with one or two people.  Its slow work, but its coming along.  My Dad helped Chris get the next few rafters up.  My Mum and I helped with a couple too.  We've now got 11 up and secured, halfway there!  The last ones will be challenging because we are running out of maneuvering room up on the walls as more rafters are put up.

Chris does a lot of climbing!

Eric didn't mind climbing up to secure strapping either

Louis and Chris levering the peak of the rafter up onto the wall

Eric and Laurie pushing the base of the rafter into place

There was a fair bit of standing around waiting for the next step

Up it goes!

Chris holds the rafter in place while Louis hammers in some nails

Building a house in the winter is cold work!

These are the collar ties that we add after securing each rafter

Looks like a roof!

Half of the rafters complete

Rafters: Part 1

Chris has spent the last several weeks working out the rafters.  He's building them up on top of the walls, then lifting them and securing them in place.  They're heavy!  Somehow, he got the first one up with only my Mum and Dad helping.

It was tricky, and probably not as safe as it should have been, but they got it up!

Chris built the second level wall that goes through the centre of the house first to provide a stable surface to slide the rafters along before lifting them in place.  You can see the spaces for the windows that will look into the main living area from the kids common room

Once the rafter was in place, it was secured by cross pieces, and rope

Because Chris is building the rafters up on the walls, he can only build 4 at a time.  He builds them in a stack before lifting them up one at a time

My Dad, Steve, has helped with most of them!

My Mum, Jan, has helped too!

Chris lifts the peak, and walks it over to the edge of the centre wall

Then he uses a board to lift the peak up, while someone pulls a rope tied to the peak, looped over the bar Chris installed at the edge of the East wall

Chris switches to a longer board to lever the peak up

He keeps a short rope securing the peak to the wall so it will not fall over into the rafters that are already secured

Steve anchors the pulling rope from below

While Chris secures the rafter above

Mum can swing a hammer too!

Then Chris joins the two rafters together with the strapping that the metal roof will be secured to once all the rafters are finished